Words Spelling Failure
by Chasing Izanami
Summary: [SO3] Short stories mostly involving Mirage and Maria, usually attempts at humor. Randomness and spoilers abound.
1. Log 01

Izanami's Notes: Semi-crackfic centralized on Mirage and Maria. I'm not confident in my writing, so if you'd please, tell me how it's going, as well as any other flaws. Hopefully, my writing isn't so flame-inducing... Word's spelling/grammar checker actually winds up doing a better job proofreading than I myself do. Bah! 

This installment was inspired by Mirage's PA dialogue in Arkives. Initially, I thought Mirage actually tested her theory by jumping over the edge herself! But it seems really illogical and out of character now that I write and think more about this. Hehehe...

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**Log 01 - An Equal and Opposite Reaction . . . Begin!**

The woes of a stumped and baffled inventor. Mirage could have sworn on her life that she had made it before, that she had on her own, no less, made that _thing_. That horrible, despicable, notoriously hard to make _thing_. But now, she couldn't even remember its name. After six failed attempts resulting in gaudy pairs of jewelry, the female martial artist gave up and quit Arkives' Eternal Sphere simulator with an uncharacteristic scowl.

_What in the world am I going to do with these, anyway? Nobody in their right mind would want them..._

With time to spare while Fayt putted around town, Mirage took a seat at the edge of one of the weird roadways, oddly left without safety rails or any way to prevent small children from sailing over the edges. It was another one of those fourth-dimension anomalies, ranking slightly above the endless skies below the citizen's feet. Under different circumstances, it might have been interesting to investigate the fourth dimension further.

_What would happen if you fell over the edge...?_

Suddenly, she came up with a solution to kill three birds with one stone, and to prove being blonde had nothing to do with intelligence. Those useless trinkets could be put to use! Fishing out a square-shaped hoop earring, Mirage promptly tossed it into the cloudy, blue abyss. No matter what happened to that abomination, it wasn't really a loss at this point.

And she waited.

And waited.

Waited.

"Ouch!" Something had jabbed her in the back, and as she looked behind herself, saw no man to accuse. Mirage did a double-take when she saw a faint sparkle on the ground; upon further inspection, it was definitely the earring the woman had discarded for the sake of science. Some phenomenon had caused its flight path to loop back to the platform, though whatever advanced technology actually caused it, it wasn't likely she'd ever find out. Nevertheless, Mirage found it fairly exciting that such things were possible, and felt the urge to test the system a little bit more. This time, she dropped the dud straight downwards and it landed beside her, bouncing slightly and falling back into the possibly artificial sky.

"It wouldn't be good if you somehow fell into an infinite loop..." Mirage wondered to herself, no longer paying attention to the object she discarded that recently dropped from the sky again. "They must have safeguards for that. Or else surely there would be objects continuously falling from above and back down, wouldn't there?"

It was basically self-confirmed that at the very least, small solids would always be returned to the walkway, but what troubled her now was what happened when the subject in question was large, or not solid matter, like a beam from a phase gun or the results of symbology. It was Mirage's lucky day...

---

No matter how Maria approached the situation, Mirage was looking increasingly insane. The woman in question was sitting on the side of the walkway, feet dangling over edge, and looked like she throwing things into the distance. Every now and then Mirage would look around suspiciously, smirk for a second, and then go back to whatever the heck she was doing in the first place. Quite bored herself, Maria let curiosity consume her and approached the apparently crazy blonde. "Hey, Mirage, what are you..." Maria said as she approached, pausing in the middle of her sentence because she could have sworn she heard the other woman giggle insanely for a second. "...Doing?"

"Oh, hello Maria." She stood up and stared at the younger girl for a few seconds. "Do you have your gun with you?"

"Yes... Why do you ask? And you haven't-" Maria answered as she was cut off by a very enthusiastic Mirage.

"Alright, now just stand right over there- Right, just on the edge. Now point your gun directly downwards, alright?"

"O-Okay, but what's the point to all this?" she complied, caught off-guard by the sudden orders.

"Pull the trigger." commanded the blonde, ignoring the other's question.

"You had better tell me what this is all about..." Maria said as she fired. The beam pierced the mass of clouds and sky and disappeared from sight. Mirage took a step away from the blue-haired girl knowingly and was met with a strange look from her. The blonde just smiled back and waited, hoping Maria wouldn't move. "Mir-AHHH!"

---

Mirage Koas, member of Quark, not-so-dumb-blonde, _and_ martial arts master(?), did not in any way feel guilty. With all the innocence of a young child, she set up her presumably younger-sister-figure to test a horribly cruel theory. _If you were to shoot a phase gun directly downwards, I bet it would come back and hit you in the head._ Maria's sacrifice was for the sake of science.

And boy, was she correct. After waiting a few seconds, a beam of blue light shot straight down from the heavens, destined to hit the blue-haired girl in the middle of her head. So suddenly, that she didn't finish even the first word of her forming question.

"AHHH!" Maria screamed in the sort of way that if it weren't a life-or-death situation, was hilarious. Mirage took no time in realizing and reacting to this by laughing her head off. Her normally distinguished leader was now reduced to a pathetic-looking, smoldering little girl, filled with feelings of betrayal, and boy, did she find that funny. "M-Mirage, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?"

"You- the earring...dropped it- came back..." the blonde choked out between spurts of laughter.

"Argh! You're just terrible!" Not fully comprehending what made the blast come back at her, but assuming the same things Mirage had, she kicked the woman off the edge with full force. Mirage actually dropped like a brick and for the most part, fell vertically, not horizontally. "Maybe I made a mistake... Nah, she deserved it!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" came a shriek from somewhere above, barely giving warning and enough time for Maria to think "Not again..." As expected from the writer's sense of humor, that seemingly random falling object was Mirage, not immune to Arkives' safety features. Pointless description aside, it was pretty painful for the both of them, especially Mirage's back, being on the receiving of a kick similar to her own.

"On a better note, you're a great breakfall."

"Shut up!" Maria grumbled. "And get off of me. People are staring!"

"No, but thanks. I'm fine right here."

"Mirage, stop acting like Cliff and stand up on your own two feet. This isn't funny!"

"Oh, now you're using the ultimate insult!" Mirage finally stood up and turned around, smiling. She outstretched her arm towards her abused friend to help her up.

"Thanks."

_Braindead and a lot of junk..._


	2. Log 02

Notes: Lots of subtle(?) pervy jokes. More general insanity, but I'm trying to keep in character. Game scripts help oh-so-much as far as reference goes. You know, I had to really restrain myself _so_ much from making a "it sounds like they're doing something dirty in there, but they're really not" joke this time. (And much love to my readers! I've been a little under the weather lately, not like anybody knows or cares.)

Disclaimer, which I kinda forgot last chapter: Don't own anything I use in this fic, not even my name. Star Ocean is cool. But I like Shadow Hearts more. Not relevant!

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**Log 02 – The Terror of Deep Space . . . Scary!**

Maria had run out of things to do on the Diplo. Ship-wide cleaning was taken care of twice over already, not counting any attempts by Mirage or any of the others on the ship. She had even suspected Nel and Sophia to have done it at least once before. The girl had even realized how ridiculously dirty that last sentence she though sounded, and giggled for a moment as she walked down the corridor idly. It might have drawn the stares of passing Quark members, but stares weren't going to occupy her so she paid no attention to them. Maria needed something to do. Maria needed a new vocabulary and/or better wording skills that didn't sound so overly naughty. She headed to her room to take a nap, the girl's very last resort to save her sanity, and spotted Sophia...cleaning. "Go figure."

"Oh, hi! I'll be outta the way in a minute, just hold on while I finish up under the bed..." Sophia needed them too.

"No! Don't open that door!" Maria yelled, then realized Sophia had already gone into her room quite a long time ago, and the problem was, in fact, not with opening or not opening the door. "I mean...that was just to get your attention. Don't clean under that bed!"

"Why? Are you keeping something secret under there?" the brunette giggled. "I wonder what someone like you would be hiding!"

"It's not that!" Maria yelled defensively. "You see, a long time ago, I almost made the same mistake you just did."

"Really? What was it?"

"Have you ever heard of the Klausian Swamp Octopus?"

"The Klausian Swamp Octopus? What's that?" Sophia said that as a reaction, not actually thinking about what she'd said until she was already saying it. "Wait, it's self-explanatory, isn't it?"

"Yes." she nodded. "Cliff told me about it a long time ago. It's on Klaus, it lives in swamps, and it can grow to have as many as twenty tentacles!"

"T-Twenty?! Wow, it must be huge!" Then common sense started to kick in. "Wait just a minute, how does it fit under there?"

"Because of the ship's living conditions, they can't be growing that big at all." the blue-haired girl said with authority. "Maybe in their native environment they're like that, but I don't think we can expect full-grown octopi _here_."

"Oh, that's good! So if one jumps outta there, I'll just blast it with symbology!"

Maria backed up against the door in fear. _What's wrong with her?! Isn't the possibility of being molested by a swamp octopus terrifying? I mean..._

_---_

About seven years ago, not long after our blue-haired heroine came to stay on the Diplo, she adopted the habit of cleaning ship while she was bored. Mirage nor Marietta looked at her strangely for this, so it must have been some kind of universal female habit. Not a single person's living quarters were off-limits to that fairly innocent and naïve little twelve year-old, except one. Unbeknownst to her, Cliff had motives behind steering her away from ever seriously going through his room.

However, he wasn't perfect. One day, exactly which one not mattering, young Maria managed to slip under the radar. By the time bells were ringing in Cliff's head that a certain little girl was somewhere she shouldn't be, she was already there. "Hey, Maria. What're you...doing...?" Cliff tried not to sound especially emotional, because inquiring minds might want to get to the bottom of his charade.

"Oh, just cleaning up... I'm surprised you kept things so neat considering I never actually get to do anything here!" Though she probably didn't mean it, the blonde couldn't help but think how obnoxious that sounded.

"Maria, get out."

"Ohhhh... But why? Isn't what I'm doing good?" Guilt trips put aside, she said the word that he was expecting, but not exactly prepared for. **Why.**

"Well, you see, uhhh..." Cliff, with an impulsive (and maybe erratic in situations like this) thought pattern, dredged up something from the depths of his imagination. "It's because of the Klausian Swamp Octopus. I think it lives under my bed." It was also times like this he forgot Maria was over ten years old, and even kids that old weren't usually naïve enough to fall for monster-under-the-bed threats.

"What?!" Maria shouted, jumping back a little bit. "R-Really...! Really really really?"

"Yeah...really. (Whew!)"

With some unexpectedly bad timing issues came a confused and slightly worried Mirage. "So what's the commotion all about?"

"Cliff was warning me about the Klausian Swamp Octopus!" she chirped. "But what I'm wondering is, what does it look like?"

Mirage flashed her companion a frustrated look before giving Maria a lengthy scientific answer and sending her off on some other menial task. Once the girl was out of hearing distance, she spoke to nobody in particular, "You know, I can't help but think I've taken part in something horribly, horribly wrong."

"You're right. You're going to hell for this."

"Why only me?"

"Hah, come on! I don't believe in things like that!" Cliff began walking outside but stopped and turned around. "Wait a minute, are you telling me those octopus things really exist?"

"..."

"Ow!"

---

Maria snapped back into reality. "Anyway, it's really dangerous! You could get hurt, or worse, you could **die**."

"Is it really that bad?"

"I think so. Come on, I'm sure there's something around here we could do together."

"Alright, whatever you say!" Sophia shrugged as she was led off by Maria. "But I kind of wanted to see what it looked like..."

_The truth is your greatest weapon, up in the cosmos where we both belong..._


End file.
